Show Me:

Notes from the Underground

Out There

A Subterranean Maze

Think you know the city pretty well? Investigate what lies beneath the streets with Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour. Start at Doc Maynard’s Public House and weave through the below ground maze that reveals the city buried after the Great Fire of 1889. Be prepared to encounter stairs, uneven terrain, and spotting lighting. Abandon your vanity (and fussy clothes) for adventure.

The tour’s namesake himself deserves special mention. A local news reporter in the 1930s and 1940s, Speidel eventually quit and opened his own public relations firm. He became an urban activist and fought to preserve one of Seattle’s greatest treasures: Pioneer Square. He and his cohort effectively campaigned to designate downtown’s oldest neighborhood as a historic district, saving it from destruction. He founded the tour in 1965 to introduce others to a different side of his beloved city. When he and his wife, Shirley, gave the first public tour that year, 500 people showed up for a new view of Seattle. The rest is history.

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